OTW Guest Post: Mel Stanfill
People cycle in and out of fandoms, and we lose a lot of institutional memory -- like people today not having any idea why older fans or older fics use disclaimers. Having the OTW as that institution that supports things like Fanlore, and that brings different fandoms into a space where they might interact, helps with that sort of thing...Just generally, fandom needs institutions -- we need a fanworks repository that’s not beholden to advertisers or individuals’ finances; we need an academic journal that is not beholden to the academic publishing industry; etc.
Mel Stanfill wrote about fan labor in 2014 and about femslash in 2017. We take a look at fandom then & now https://goo.gl/qiUhYL